Reference is made to the works of Margaret Wheatley (Management
and the New Science); Michael Rothschild (Bionomics); Bernardo
Huberman (Dynamics of Collective Actions and Learning in
Multi-agent Organizations); Robert Axtel and Joshua Epstein
(creators of Sugarscape, a model of trade); and Axel
Leijonhufvud (Multi-agent Systems), all published as Webtexts.
Transactions as extensions of human biology evince the complex
nature of human interactions. Maturana and Varela indirectly
refer to human transactions: "Coherence and harmony in relations
and interactions between the members of a human social system
are due to the coherence and harmony of their growth in it, in
an ongoing social learning which their own social (linguistic)
operation defines and which is possible thanks to the genetic
and ontogenetic processes that permit structural plasticity of
the members" (Op. cit., p.199). They diagram the shift from
minimum autonomy of components (characteristic of organisms) to
maximum autonomy of components (characteristic of human
societies).
A Walk Through Wall Street, in US News and World Report, Nov. 16,
1987, pp. 64-65. One from among many reminiscences by Martin
Mayer, author of Madison Avenue, Wall Street, Men and Money.
"Wall Street as price setter for the country dealt with much more
than pieces of paper. Commodities markets proliferated. The fish
market was on the East River at Fulton; the meat market on the
Hudson just to the north.... The 'physicals' of all commodities
markets were present...there were cotton sacks in the warehouse
of the Cotton Exchange, coffee bags stored here for delivery
against the contracts at the Sugar and Coffee Exchange on
Hanover Square and often a smell of roasting coffee.
"In the 1950's, this was a male world-women were not allowed to
work on the floor of the Stock Exchange, let alone become
members. The old-timers explained with great sincerity that there
was no ladies room."
The report points out that today Wall Street "sees less of the
real world outside, depends more on abstract information
processed through data machinery and more than ever responds to
forces far from its borders."
Zoon semiotikon, the semiotic animal, labeled by Paul Mongré
(also known as Felix Hausdorf).
Charles S. Peirce gave the following definitions: Representamen:
a Sign is a Representamen of which some interpretant is a
cognition of a mind (2.242). Object: the Mediate object is the
object outside the Sign; ...the sign must indicate it by a hint
(Letter to Lady Welby, December 23, 1908). Interpretant: the
effect that the sign would produce upon any mind (Letter to Lady
Welby, March 14, 1909).
In reference to the symbolic nature of market transactions,
another Peircean definition is useful: "Symbols grow. They come
into being by development out of other signs.... We think only in
signs.... If a man makes a new symbol, it is by thoughts
involving concepts" (2.307).
The pragmatic thought is, nevertheless, inherent in any sign
process. Markets embody sign processes in the pragmatic field.
Winograd and Flores state bluntly "A business (like any other
organization) is constituted as a network of recurrent
conversations" (Op. cit., p. 168).
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (with the assistance of Takashi Hikino)
Scale and Scope. The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism.
Cambridge MA/London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1990.
"...the modern industrial Enterprise...has more than a production
function." (p. 14). Chandler further notes that "expanded output
by a change in capital-labor ratios is brought about by economies
of scale which incorporate economies of speed.... Wholesalers
and retailers expand to exploit economies of scale" (p. 21).
James Gordley. The Philosophical Origins of Modern Contract
Doctrine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Mariadele Manca Masciadri. I Contratti di Baliatico, 2 vols.
Milan: (s.n.), 1984.
John H. Pryor. Business Contracts of Medieval Provence. Selected
Notulae from the Cartulary of Girard Amalric of Marseilles,
1248. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1981.
ECU: In 1979, the process of European unification led to the
creation of the European Monetary System (EMS), with its coin
being the European Currency Unit (ECU) and the Exchange Rate
Mechanism (ERM). As a basket of European currencies, the ECU
serves as a reserve currency in Europe and probably beyond. It
is not the currency of choice for international transactions, and
as of the Maastricht negotiations, which affirmed the need for a
Community currency, the ECU was not adopted for this purpose.
Although predominant weight in the basket (over 30%) is given to
the German mark, the ECU is designed on the assumption that it
is quite improbable that a certain currency will move in the same
direction against all others. Therefore, exchange rates are
statistically stabilized.
Michael Rothschild. Bionomics: Economy as Ecosystem. Webtext,
1990.
Robert L. Heilbroner. The Demand for the Supply Side, in The New
York Review of Books, June 11, 1981, p.40.
He asks rhetorically: "How else should one identify a force that
debases language, drains thought, and undoes dignity? If the
barrage of advertising, unchanged in its tone and texture, were
devoted to some other purpose-say the exaltation of the public
sector-it would be recognized in a moment for the corrosive
element that it is. But as the voice of the private sector it
escapes this startled notice. I mention it only to point out
that a deep source of moral decay for capitalism arises from its
own doings, not from that of its governing institutions."